Recently, I had dinner alone. That’s not unusual, but something happened this particular evening that was. I had finished my dinner, sitting at a bistro table on a downtown Birmingham sidewalk, scrolling on my phone. I was waiting until it was time to walk four blocks to a local theater to see a live performance.
Two young men approached my table, standing, and addressed me, “Hello, M’am. How are you this evening?” Immediately, I was on alert. What did they want? Money? To lure me into a nest of crime and debauchery?
I looked more closely and saw that they were neatly dressed and groomed, although one of the young men’s ginger hair had a wild and tousled look. One of them sported a polo shirt with the name of a local Christian university embroidered on the chest. Now I wondered if they were about to ask me if I knew Jesus.
We chatted for a short while until one of them asked if they could sit down with me at my table, explaining that they were waiting for their dates. By now, I realized they were harmless, and gestured for them to take a seat. We talked about school—they were both freshmen from out of state—and they told me how they had decided on this particular college. They told me that they were pleasantly surprised by the downtown scene of Birmingham. It was just a lovely conversation. But I still wondered, “Why are these guys talking to me? Do they want something? Am I giving off lonely old lady vibes, and they thought to rescue me from my fate of eating dinner alone?”
The boys’ dates soon arrived, and we all made introductions, the young people calling me “Miss Renée.” As the two couples left to walk down the street, I glanced at my watch and realized that I needed to head on over to the theater. I got up and started following them down the street, awkwardly close. The two girls turned back to me and asked, “Can we walk you to your car, Miss Renée?”
“No, I’m walking to the theater just a few blocks away. I’ll be fine. But thank you.”
And we all continued on our way.
This encounter has stayed with me for a few weeks now, and I’ve shared this story with many friends, trying to suss out why these young men approached me. How did they see me? Would they have done the same if I were a man? A younger woman? There were plenty of empty tables that they could have chosen to sit at while waiting on their dates. Why me?
I’ve already shared what my initial, instinctual reactions were, and the longer I sit with this story, I think they were just polite young people. Did they see their own grandmothers in me, maybe widows themselves, and thought it would be a nice gesture to converse with me?
I’ll never know for sure, but I’m choosing to believe this last reason.